Fat Chance (20 page)

Greg had put on his old work t-shirt and tatty black combat trousers to do the job and I stood and watched appreciatively as he lifted the heavy stone squares onto the trolley. His biceps
rippled
under the thin t-shirt material as the sweat ran down his back,
staining
the shirt. You know you’re really horny when a s
weat-st
ained shirt is doing it for you.

We were right out the back in the exterior part of the superstore where they sell all the garden stuff. There was no-one around.

I watched Greg shift three of the flagstones onto the trolley before I couldn’t stand it any longer.

‘Hey, baby,’ I say to him.

Greg stands straight and wipes a sweaty arm across his forehead. ‘What?’ His face is flushed red and his hair is sticking up like a
peacock’s
tail, but he still looks adorable as far as I’m concerned.

‘There’s not that many people around, is there?’ I point out and I move closer.

He swivels his head about and returns my gaze. ‘Nope. What’s your point?’

‘Well, I was just thinking that behind the row of bushes over there looks quite private.’ I squeeze one of his biceps.

‘Yeah? So? Are you feeling alright, Zoe? Only I was going to ask you to help me push this trolley back to the cash desk, but if you’re feeling a bit—’

‘Greg! I am absolutely
fine
. I’m just saying that there’s nobody about and
it looks really private behind those bushes
.’

This is still greeted with confusion. ‘Are you saying you want those bushes in our garden? Only they look bloody expensive and the fence is fine as far as I can tell.’

Good grief.

Sometimes men can be denser than liquid hydrogen.

I wrap my arm around Greg’s neck and stare him in the eye. ‘Gregory, I want you to take me behind those bushes and fuck me. Do you think you can do that?’

The light dawns. ‘Er . . . are you serious?!’

I grab his crotch. ‘No Greg, this is all one big joke and I’m not really massaging your cock at the moment.’

‘We can’t, Zoe!’ His head darts about. ‘What if somebody catches us? We can’t!’

Big Greg says no, but little Greg is most definitely saying yes. Usually it’s a bad sign when a man thinks with his penis, but in this instance I’m more than happy for it to take charge.

Without brooking any more argument, I yank my husband behind the row of privets. Handily, there’s a pile of relatively soft-looking compost and bark chipping sacks behind it. It’s almost as if the Gods of DIY
want
us to shag in the middle of this garden centre.

It takes me precisely three nanoseconds to whip my jeans and knickers down. Therefore I have plenty of time to help my husband fumble his combat trousers open. This is just as well, as if the job had been left to him on his own I’d still be sitting on that pile of compost awaiting entry.

When Greg is eventually ready for action, I turn around and bend over the compost sacks. He slides into me, and it is completely and totally delicious in every single respect. Okay, I can feel several bark chippings prodding me in the tits and gut, Greg actually smells like three-day-old cheese, and I’m going to have horrible friction burns from the plastic I’m sprawled out on, by but crikey it’s a fuck I won’t be forgetting in a hurry.

Sadly, necessity dictates it doesn’t last that long. We both reach a more than satisfactory climax in less than two minutes. This is
officially
the quickest I’ve reached orgasm since I bought that
Rampant
Rabbit seven years ago.

I used it once, and climaxed so hard I needed two fillings replaced. It went into a cupboard and never saw the light of day again, because the idea of repeating that intense a sensation filled me with horror. I’m also with a private dentist, so it would have got extremely expensive in the long run.

Having done his duty, Greg flops onto my back, as is standard operating procedure at a time like this.

Before I let him withdraw, I must remember to move my legs back a bit, as my knickers are around my ankles and the last thing I want is a gusset full of semen when he pulls out. If I can just make sure my underpants are not directly below my bum I should—

‘Are you folks okay?’

Oh dear sweet Jesus.

‘Is that man hurting you, Miss?’

He is, bless him, about seventy years old. The poor bugger probably isn’t used to seeing two overweight people slumped in post-coitus over the bark chippings and has reached the conclusion that I’m being attacked.

‘Oh, fucking hell!’ Greg shouts and backs away from me like I’ve just been wired up to the mains. This, of course, deposits all that semen I was talking about right into my knicker crotch.

Nevertheless, a wet undercarriage is better than a charge for indecent exposure, so I reach down and yank my jeans up, trying my hardest to keep my nether regions from sight behind the pile of compost and chippings.

Have you ever tried to pull up your underwear and jeans while leaning forward in a prone position? It’s a lot harder than it looks.

I have to rest my full weight on the sacks of earth and wood, while thrusting my legs out backwards to allow the jeans to ride up my thighs properly.

Now, I’m proud to say I’ve lost quite a bit of weight recently, but I’m still a heavy girl. Heavy enough to send the big bulging plastic sacks sliding away from me and onto the ground. I follow them in short order with a plaintive squawk.

‘Oh dear!’ the old fella cries, and comes over to help me up.

Where my bloody husband is right now—when I need him most—I have no idea.

I turn my head.

Oh yes, there he is, standing in dumbfounded shock like a naughty boy who’s been caught with his hands in the sweet jar.

‘Greg! Help me, will you?!’ I implore him.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he mumbles and comes to my aid.

Both husband and decrepit sales assistant help me to my feet.

‘Thank you,’ I say and try to ignore the uncomfortable damp feeling between my legs.

‘Yes, thank you very much, sir. It’s very kind of you to come over,’ Greg tells the pensioner.

What? And watch us fucking for a couple of minutes?

‘Do you need any assistance?’ he asks, a bit unsure. He’s obviously been pre-programmed by the senior staff to always be polite and helpful to customers. I can’t imagine that there was a training session designed to help new sales staff deal with people shagging on the landscaping products, though.

‘Ah, no. I think we’re fine,’ I reply.

‘Yes! Absolutely fine!’ Greg adds, in the highest tone of voice I’ve ever heard him use. ‘We’re just buying some new
paving
stones,’ he embellishes. The old duffer looks down at all the sacks now lying haphazardly around our feet. ‘And bark chippings of course!’ Greg throws in. He bends down to pick up a sack. It’s the one I’ve just been screwed on top of. ‘We always need ba
rk chipp
ings!’

No-one
always needs
bark chippings. Bark chippings are rarely
needed
by anybody, unless you happen to be half termite.

Still, it seems to do the trick. He believes the ruse. ‘Okay, then. Well, if you do need anything then please don’t hesitate to come find me,’ the old bloke says. ‘My name is Roger.’

Of course
his name is Roger. Why wouldn’t it be?

Given what I’m carrying around in my undercarriage, the next fifteen minutes of my life are
delightful
, as I’m sure you can imagine. Especially the fantastic moment I have to sit in the car.

Despite that, I’m in a cracking good mood as we arrive at home and get to work laying those flagstones. After I’ve had a quick shower, that is.

To have your sex drive restored and purring like a well-oiled engine is a wonderful and unexpected side effect of being on a strict diet. I’ll take a soaked gusset and friction burns over self-loathing and a barren sex life any day of the week.

I should also note before I close this diary entry that Greg and I revisited the mail order rugby kits a couple of nights ago.
I h
adn’t burned them in the end, just stuffed them at the back of th
e wardrobe
.

We still both looked utterly ridiculous once we had them on, but this time it was because neither of us could get the shorts to
stay up
. The tops billowed around our smaller frames like sails.

We had sex in them, though.

It was terrific!

The story of the rugby kit doesn’t quite end there, either.

You see, I now have a goal to strive for. One that even eclipses the fifty-grand prize that’s waiting at the end of the competition in September.

All those years and unhealthy meals ago, when Zoe Milton was a svelte size ten, she was also something of an accidental thief.

The rugby kit I’d been given to wear in Lionel’s photo shoot never got handed back. It went in my rucksack and stayed there until I discovered it about a week later when I emptied the bag out. By that time I was head over heels in love with Greg Milton. This meant that the outfit had a huge amount of meaning for me. It symbolised our first meeting, our first time together in bed, and the start of what I hoped would be a long-term relationship.

So I kept it, and put it somewhere very safe.

For nearly twenty years—unbeknown to my husband and the world at large—that rugby kit has sat folded up neatly in a variety of wardrobes and cupboards, waiting for me to put it back on again.

There is my goal.

There is my challenge.

I will fit into that rugby kit again, I wholeheartedly
promise yo
u.

GREG’S WEIGHT LOSS DIARY

Thursday, June 26th

17 stone, 1 pound (3 stone, 1 pound lost)

I
hate running.

I
loathe
jogging.

I
detest
sprinting.

‘But it’s what our bodies are designed to do!’ a well-meaning spandex-clad maniac told me the other day in the gym. ‘It’s how we used to get across the African plains.’

I have never visited the African plains, nor do I ever intend to.

But if events conspire against me and I end up having to go there, it will be by modern conveyance. I will fly to the
continent
in a plane, and once there I will cross the bloody thing in an
air-conditioned
jeep. This will allow me ample opportunity to take photos of the local wildlife and chat to my friendly guide Akibu about his Manchester United football shirt. I can hardly do those things if I am having to jog through the tall grasses and worry about the nearby lions, can I?

Running provides me with no pleasure whatsoever. I am too tall and too bulky to do it efficiently. There’s a good reason why Paula Radcliffe and Mo Farrah are such skinny little buggers. If you’re carrying too much weight your equilibrium is thrown off and you risk crashing to Earth painfully with almost every step. I know this because I have fallen over more times since I started running than an alcoholic with an inner-ear infection.

Bearing all this in mind, you can imagine my delight when Stream FM announced the second Fat Chance challenge at the weigh-in on the Sunday before last.

Yep, it’s a sodding fun run. An entire eight kilometres of
ambulatory
hell.

Not only that, but the fun run will also be open to several lucky members of the public, picked from out of a hat by one of Elise’s production assistants. Alongside us poor fatties will be thirty cheerful—and probably thin—people from the Stream FM audience, no doubt included to increase the size of the
spectacle
.

. . . and it’s an audience that seems to be growing larger with every passing day. Fat Chance has really picked up steam
popularity-wise
in the past month or so.

I reckon these extra runners have been crowbarred into the race so that the poor spectators along the route don’t have to constantly look at a load of fat people sweating their way into an early grave. If one of us keels over from a severe myocardial infarction, I’m sure the specially chosen extra runners have been ordered to conceal the bloated corpse until the coroner arrives.

The run will start by wending its way through the park, carry on through some of the quieter streets in the town, and
eventually
end up at Stream’s broadcast building eight kilometres down
the ro
ad.

The first couple across the line will win the challenge—and two tickets to see England play at Wembley in a friendly against the Ukraine. I can’t stand football and nor can Zoe, so our motivation levels for this once are in the basement.

‘Can’t we just feign serious injury on the start line and pull out?’ Zoe suggests as we mull over the email we’ve just received from the radio station.

‘Possibly, though I think it may come across as something of a coincidence if we both collapse in agony twenty yards from the start pistol.’

‘Maybe I’ll just feign injury, then.’

‘Oh no. Not bloody likely. If I have to run this thing then so do you.’

Zoe sticks her tongue out at me and takes another bite of her green salad.

‘And this thing is on Sunday?’

‘Yep.’

‘Less than a week away. I wish they’d give us a bit more bloody notice.’

‘What? And let us get too prepared for it? Not likely. Unsuspecting fat people make better entertainment. The look of confusion and misery on our chubby little cheeks is good box office.’

‘True.’ Zoe taps her fork on the kitchen counter thoughtfully. ‘So that gives us six days to get as prepared as we can for the longest run either of us has ever done.’

‘Even when we were young and thin.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

‘Joy of joys.’

‘And we get to do it with a bunch of skinny idiots who will probably run us into the ground in three seconds flat.’

Zoe points her fork at me. ‘That’s not the worst thing that could happen.’

‘It’s not?’

‘Nope. What if they decide to
cheer us on
? Encourage us with useful motivational phrases and hearty clapping.’

The horror of this sinks in. My face goes an unhealthy shade of white. ‘They’re going to, aren’t they? That’s really why Stream have picked a load of punters to take part. Not to beat us . . .’

‘. . . but to help us across the finishing line.’

I grip my wife’s arm. ‘I can’t do it, Zoe. I can’t have healthy people running around me in circles shouting
You can do it, Lard Arse!
It’ll finish me off.’

‘If you want the fifty grand at the end of this thing you’ll do it. After all, we’re in second place right now. We’ve actually got a chance of
winning
this competition if we keep it up the way we have been.’

Zoe’s logic is unfortunately unassailable.

At the weigh-in the previous day we were shocked and amazed to discover that we were in second place in terms of the competition overall, just behind Frankie and Benny, who both look noticeably thinner as each week passes. They’re half a stone in front of us, while Valerie and George are a mere four pounds behind. If we can keep going the way we are, as Zoe says, we could pull clear of the tea shop twosome and close the gap on our biggest rivals.

This means running eight kilometres in public in those stupid bright red outfits, though. Over five miles dressed like a sweaty fucking tomato.

Oh joy of joys.

The kind of weather you want for a fun run is mild, sunny, and without much of a breeze, so Sunday of course dawns cold, drizzling, and gusty. Not only do we have to wear our idiotic red Fitness4All outfits, we now get the pleasure of them sticking to our clammy skin thanks to the constant rain and wind.

The inclement British summer weather doesn’t appear to have put off the crowds. Not in the slightest.

The audience at the cycling challenge was limited by the size of the gym hall, so we didn’t really get much of an inclination of how popular this competition is becoming. The park is open to all and sundry, though, and the size of the crowd that has turned out this morning is shockingly large. It numbers easily in the thousands.

Zoe and I are flabbergasted as we walk over to the start line, pushing our way through a heaving mass of bodies to reach the guys from the radio station, who are huddled in a semi-circle of grass that’s marked out with metal barriers to keep the crowd at bay.

As we push our way through I can hear my name being shouted from several people in the swarm, as well as Zoe’s. There are over a dozen banners and placards being waved. One reads ‘Frankie & Benny rock!’ Another says ‘Go Angel and Dom!’ Most
disconcertingly
, I see a third saying ‘We love the Miltons!’ I peer at the teenage girl holding it. I’ve absolutely no idea who she is.

A complete stranger is holding up a placard in support of me and my wife . . . and I have never laid eyes on her before. What an exquisitely strange sensation.

The Miltons have fans. Honest-to-goodness
fans
.

I try to put the notion out of my head as we enter the
cordoned
-off area. The last thing I need is my ego running away with itself before my feet have had a chance to get going.

I spy Elise by a stack of electronic equipment. She’s having a radio pack fitted over an outfit of tight white spandex, indicating that she too will be running in the race. The spandex leaves nothing to imagination. Usually at a time like this my brain would indulge in a nano-fantasy about a drunken threesome with Zoe and Elise, but I’m still so shocked by the idea of my local celebrity that it
completely
forgets to do it.

‘I thought you were going to start the race and Will was going to run?’ Zoe says to her as we get to where she’s standing.

Elise rolls her eyes. ‘He twisted his ankle in training last night.’ She points over to where Will is enjoying a pre-show latte and
chatting
to some of his adoring listeners. ‘From the amount of whinging he’s been doing you’d have thought his foot had been
bitten
off by a passing badger.’ Her eyes narrow. ‘He doesn’t appear to be having any trouble standing up today, though.’

Elise then rubs her eyes and yawns. ‘You sure you’re up to this?’ I ask her.

‘I think so. I was out late last night and have a hangover of epic proportions, so I’m not exactly happy about having to run all that way with this thing strapped to my hip.’

Zoe grins. ‘How are things going with Mister Wonderful?’

‘Adam is a lot of fun,’ Elise replies, somewhat defensively. Her relationship with the main sponsor of Fat Chance has been well documented in the local papers. You can tell the unwanted attention is smarting a little. ‘Anyway, the show’s starting soon. You’d both better go over and stand with the others.’

‘Oh dear, we’ve been dismissed,’ I say to Zoe, with mischief in my voice.

‘Sounds like the blonde bombshell local radio DJ doesn’t want to talk about her love life with us anymore,’ Zoe agrees.

Elise gives us the finger discreetly and hurries off over to where Will is standing. My wife and I go over and join the rest of the
contestants
to await the start of the race.

We’re joined by the lucky thirty punters who have been picked to run alongside us all the way to the Stream FM building. As feared, most of them look intolerably healthy. To add insult to injury, they are all decked out in rather tasteful white running kits emblazoned with the Fitness4All logo. This getup looks a lot more dignified than the hideous red ensemble I’m forced to wear once again.

‘Hi Greg!’ a middle-aged woman wearing a headband says to me. Like the girl with the placard, I have no idea who this person is, yet she seems to think she knows me well, judging from her friendly greeting.

‘Morning,’ I say a little uncertainly.

‘Looking forward to running with you today!’ she tells me
happily
.

‘Yes. Me too. I guess.’

‘That’s the spirit!’ she crows, and gives me a playful punch on the arm, before performing several painful looking warm-up lunges right in front of me.

Everyone else dressed in white has the same cheerful, expectant look about them.

Everyone dressed in red looks altogether less sure of themselves. Other than Frankie and Benny, that is. They both look so determined to win they could be German.

Benny has even joined in with the warm-up exercises, and is staring down the course like a Formula One driver on the grid waiting for the lights to go out. I realise at that moment that there is simply no point in trying to win this race—the Jamaican couple already have it sewn up mentally before the start gun even fires.

The rest of us clad in bright red just look scared. Eight kilometres may sound like nothing if your BMI is healthy and your ankles don’t have to support an extra five stone, but when you’ve been at the kebabs too much over the past ten years, eight kilometres feels like eight thousand. I can already feel the tightness in my chest and the burning in my thighs.

Shane and Theresa look the most worried of all of us, which hardly comes as a surprise. While it looks like they’ve lost quite a bit of weight between them, they both still look incredibly large when compared to the rest of us.

Looking at Shane’s concerned face I’m instantly reminded of just how crass this entire enterprise actually is. A baying crowd have come to gawp at a bunch of fat people pushing themselves to the limit.

And if that limit gets passed? Well, that would be just terrific for the ratings, wouldn’t it? I’d imagine the sight of Shane face down on the ground and once again requiring medical attention would be just what the doctor ordered.

I’m brought out of my cynical reverie by the sound of Elise and Will firing the crowd up. It doesn’t take much effort. They’re all excited about this race, even if we’re not. I catch Shane’s eye and give him an encouraging smile and a thumbs-up. He returns it slowly. I can see how much his hand is visibly shaking.

‘Okay guys!’ Will shouts into his microphone. ‘Everyone to the start line. Let’s get this race underway!’

We shuffle forward into position as Will tells the crowd more about the route we’ll be following. Elise comes over and stands between me and Zoe.

‘If you intend to interview us,’ Zoe says to her, ‘I’d do it in the first two hundred yards. After that all you’re likely to do is get covered in sweat and phlegm.’

‘No worries,’ Elise replies, gripping her microphone tightly in one hand. ‘Any interviews I do will be kept short anyway. I feel like I’m about to throw up any minute.’